Concern among retirees: the rules for combining employment and retirement are about to tighten

Concern among retirees wishing to continue a professional activity. At a time when companies increasingly need the skills of seniors in the face of the development of AI, the rules for combining employment and retirement are preparing to tighten. This system, which allows those who wish to continue to work while receiving their retirement pension, will be modified, under the Social Security financing law for 2026.

From January 1, 2027, the rules will be as follows: before the age of 64, people who return to work after having liquidated their rights will not be able to receive more than the amount of their pension. What was earned while working will therefore be deducted from the pension amount. In addition, if professional income exceeds the amount of the retirement pension, the latter could even be completely suspended.

1.9 billion euros in savings

Second change: between 64 and 67 years old, retirees will be able to combine pension and earned income provided that the latter remains below 7,000 euros gross per year. Beyond that, the pension amount will be reduced by the equivalent of half of the excess. You will therefore have to wait until the age of 67 for the device to be truly advantageous. Enough to dampen the enthusiasm of those who wanted to supplement their income or put their skills at the service of a business, even on an occasional basis.

The government hopes to make around 1.9 billion euros in savings by 2030. Last May, Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, former Minister of Labor, and Virginie Calmels, president of the CroissancePlus network, denounced in Le Figaro a “totally counterproductive idea”. “What questions us is the reasoning: the hypothesis according to which penalizing accumulation would lead seniors to prolong their activity before liquidating their rights. There is nothing to establish this. All economic and industrial players even converge towards an opposite conclusion: the most probable effect of this change is not a postponement of departure but a cessation of activity,” they wrote.